Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.

It must be true that whenever a sensational murder is committed there are people who — though they are, quite properly, of no interest to law enforcers, attorneys, or newspaper reporters — weep, lie sleepless, and realize at last that their lives have been changed by a crime in which they played no part.

You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you. That is why I know you will join the Corps and get a great deal of pleasure out of going after the other kind of criminal who is sick, not just socially protesting. The man who can kill and enjoy it.

.....murder is not just a crime of lust or violence. It becomes possession. They are part of you … [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one … and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them.

Gentlemen of the Jury, the charge against the prisoner is murder, and the punishment of murder Is death ; and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to us the awful solemnity of the occasion which brings you and me face to face.

For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.

Immanuel Kant , On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (1797).

Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety.

I believe too thoroughly that we create our own reality, for one thing -- an unpopular belief where violence is concerned -- but I'm convinced that the victim-to-be picks out the assailant with as much skill and craft as the murderer seeks his victim, and until we learn much more about both, we'll get nowhere battling crime. I'm not justifying murder by any means, but I'm saying that the victim wants to be murdered -- perhaps to be punished, if not by a vengeful god then by one of his fellows, and that a would-be murderer can switch in a minute and become the victim instead; and that the slayer wants to be slain.

We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes.

Potter Stewart, Majority opinion in 7-2 ruling that the death penalty is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment for premeditated murder (July 2, 1976).

This is my costume. I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else.

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy.

Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 1, line 254.

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incardine,
Making the green one red.

Macbeth, Act II, scene 2, line 60.

Blood hath been shed ere now i' the olden time,
Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal;
Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd
Too terrible for the ear: the time has been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools: this is more strange
Than such a murder is.

Macbeth, Act III, scene 4, line 76.

The great King of kings
Hath in the table of his law commanded
That thou shalt do no murder: and wilt thou, then,
Spurn at his edict and fulfill a man's?

Caesar. Words on being stabbed by Brutus, according to Suetonius. Quoted as "Et tu Brutus" and "Tu quoque Brute." True Tragedy of Richarde, Duke of York. (1600). Also found in S. Nicholson's Acolastus his Afterwitte. (1600) Caesar's Legend, in Mirror for Magistrates. (1587) Malone suggests that the Latin words appeared in the old Latin play by Richard Eedes—Epilogus Coesaris Interfecti, given at Christ Church, Oxford. (1582).

Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies.
Trie gods on murtherers fix revengeful eyes.